Black Lives Matter: Why Anna Wintour's diversity apology may not be enough

Anna Wintour at Milan Fashion Week earlier this year. Photo / Getty

If the fashion industry thought lockdown represented a peculiarly 21st-century kind of Armageddon, it is rapidly revising its idea of what Armageddon looks like.

Three months of closed stores, tanking share prices (profits at Richemont down by 67 per cent) and the decimation of household names, must seem like tractable logistical problems compared with the moral quagmire many brands now find themselves in, as first-person accusations of racism and detailed records of systemic failure to deal with institutionalised prejudices rain down on them like toxic bullets.

On Wednesday, it was the turn of Anna Wintour to issue an apology for lack of diversity at American Vogue, after she came under pressure from previous employees of colour.

"I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators.

We have made mistakes, too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes," she wrote.

That probably won't be the clean line Wintour hoped for.

Shelby Ivey Christie, who worked as a media planner at US Vogue in 2016 and tweeted that her time at the glossy was "the most challenging and miserable" of her career, appears not to have been an isolated case. (There are plenty of white employees who had a miserable time there, too, but that doesn't exonerate a flawed, discriminatory culture.)

A mea culpa from Wintour, a woman who, in her 30 years at the top of Vogue, has fastidiously positioned herself on the "right" side of history - featuring Michelle Obama on her cover three times - feels big.

.@FLOTUS Michelle Obama is the cover star of our December issue! Read the full story: https://t.co/ihGSr9Obhl pic.twitter.com/OONghTYMP8

— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) November 11, 2016

The questions and whistle-blowing aren't going away any time soon, particularly as race discrimination doesn't seem confined to older generations.

On Wednesday night, Leandra Medine, aka the Man Repeller, a 31-year-old style blogger turned influencer mogul previously feted by the industry (and to a younger cohort, probably more influential and relevant than Wintour), stepped down as CEO of her company after criticism over the lack of diversity in her team.

The past two weeks have seen a tidal wave of emotion and politicised anger sweep across the tightly marshalled spaces traditionally occupied by fashion.

Brands that obsessively curate their imagery and heavily police negative comments can only watch in consternation as their Instagram feeds become a mixture of priestly confessionals and a very public form of the stocks.

Hedi Slimane, the controversial creative director at Celine who expressed sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement, has been lashed for his alleged antipathy towards black models.

Accusations and allegations are everywhere. From Anthropologie to Zara, there appears to be a litany of coded racism (Anthropologie is accused of referring to its black customers as Nick).

Zimmermann, Australia's most successful luxury fashion brand, has been lambasted for a leaked document from a former employee detailing the exhaustive minutiae of its rules about how the sales staff in its boutiques should look.

No braids, no frizz ... to many observers, the Zimmermann rules make it all but impossible for black women to work in their stores.

Many of the companies now being held up for ridicule - amid calls to boycott them - are the same ones that, a week ago, were posting messages of support to the black community, a move that has proved problematic for some, which are now being eviscerated for empty virtue signalling, or performative allyship, as it's called.

Leading the charge is @diet_prada, an Instagram feed that started as a fashion-nerd must-read that catalogued the industry's institutionalised plagiarism.

Over the past months, it has become increasingly angry and political, a magnet for those wanting to unburden their grievances.

Not that @diet_prada hasn't had its own controversies, such as when it accepted an invitation from Gucci to take over the latter's account, leading to criticism that it had abandoned its vaunted neutrality.

While many of the testimonials are compelling, the unchecked and often unguarded outpouring of comments masquerading as "facts" posted beneath runs close to vigilantism.

Diet_prada's post about the policewoman thrown from her horse in London after protesters threw a bike was captioned: "Horse knocks officer into streetlight in an act of solidarity with the BLM movement" and garnered hundreds of appreciative comments and laughing emoji. No mention that the policewoman suffered a collapsed lung, broken rib and collarbone.

As events unravel in unpredictable directions, brands and individual influencers seem at a loss as to how to step through the ethical tangle they find themselves in. Being black is no guarantee of "right thinking".

Virgil Abloh, the black creative director for Louis Vuitton's menswear, has been under fire over the amount he was thought to have initially donated to #BlackLivesMatter causes. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's shocking death, many white fashion voices vowed to do better.

Doubtless some meant it. White influencers posted recommendations of educational books they'd suddenly discovered while copying and pasting texts about their white privilege.

Some are following through, giving their platforms over to black voices. Others, like Carine Roitfeld, the 65-year-old former editor of French Vogue who posted a picture of herself with her "friend", the 22-year-old black model Anok Yai, have been roasted for using black people as props.

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BLM in Paris: 2 perspectives ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Video: @louispisano • #blacklivesmatter #blm #paris

A post shared by Diet Prada ™ (@diet_prada) on Jun 2, 2020 at 7:04pm PDT

Yai herself gave a more considered overview of the post in an essay she wrote for O, the Oprah magazine, which was published on Tuesday. "Of course, it was jarring. But the bigger point I'd like to focus on is that the fashion industry needs to become educated ... and fast."

She's not wrong there, particularly about the fast bit. Meanwhile, on @diet_prada comments are turning from the resigned and hurt to an incandescent "burn the house down", "fashion is dead" fury.

Bang on cue, the American-owned Hearst publishing company, after months of failing to appoint a successor to Glenda Bailey, the British former editor of American Harper's Bazaar, announced the hiring of the magazine's first black editor-in-chief - Samira Nasr, a woman so evidently well qualified for the job one that wonders why it took them so long.

One thing's for sure, the industry can't sit this one out.